CX500 GL500 650 Global

For those who hate the feel of their current Cx500 Custom seat. You can get a Harley-Davidson 1996-2002 Dyna Wide glide seat to better cushion your assets. The Dyna seat has a plastic seat pan and flexes to the shape of the bikes frame pretty easily.


First off I cut back a bit of the seat pan near the front to allow a tighter fit to the frame. The cuts are 1/2 inch circles just in front of the front bracket. I then bent the stock front fastening bracket back and drilled a hole through it so I could put a bolt through it with stacked nuts to put a bent piece of steel stock in its place because it needs to be an inch or so away from the harley one to successfully catch under the frame and keep the seat from flopping around.

I then shaved off the wiring connector box on the inner fender and relocated the wires to either side. The inner fender had a molded shape so it had to be shaved off or indent the seat pan to give it clearance.


Since I am still trying to find a fast and simple way to connect and remove the seat I drilled a hole through the fender to utilize the Seats riveted nuts. I had to make the hole a bit sloppy but not to sloppy just enough that I could move the bolt more forward because the section of the fender has three layers of metal to it and a wiring tunnel. Remove the wires before drilling. I then used a 3 inch phillips head bolt from the bottom of the fender to go through it. I drilled a hole in a 1 3/4 pvc pipe cap to hold it down but buffer from the fender to keep a semi straight appearance.


Edit to hole and bolt above
After about a year of leaving the mount the way it was I finally got tired of the bolt rusting into the seat making it a paint to take off the bike every time and it also caused me to replace the bolt several times. So what I ended up doing was cutting the bolt head off making it a stud. With that stud I flipped the pvc cup around and stacked washers and nuts in it so all the weight wasn't just on the pvc. Once I got the right height I put locktite on the end of the stud and screwed it into the seat. On the other end of the stud where it goes through the fender I used a simple wing nut to hold it in place. It doesn't look any better but the seat comes off and on in 30 seconds instead of fiddling with a blind hole and ratchet.

In addition I made up side panels to cover the exposed area of the frame the that seat doesn't cover. Pretty simple. got some card board and slowly trimmed it down to fit the frame the way I wanted. I drilled a hole in them where they connect to the hole above the stock seat screw hole. Then I picked up some black vinyl and stapled it to the wooden 1/4 inch thick wooden pieces that I cut from the template of the cardboard.



A bit crude for now but I will eventually make some out of metal.

This is what it looks like fitted.



This is what the seat looks like with the bags I have now.

New forum, new things to learn.

Looks great

Blindstitch, I came back to your seat thread because I remembered you made some type of filler to cover the gap below the seat. I'm going to try this on my CX to GL seat conversion, THANKS!

From what I can see in your pics it doesn't look crude at all, besides, it looks like the bags hide most of them anyway.

Great idea, simple and effective!

Cool and thanks for taking the time to post the piccys

Yeah the bags tend to cover the area that would be open before the panels were made. I wasn't sure I was going to buy the bags at that time so I made the side panels. I rode it for a month or two without the bags and I liked the way it looked. If I had to do it again I would make a template the same as I did and weld them in place. Only change I would make is to bend the top 1/2 inch to a 30 degree angle so the seat can go down inside the groove freely without the chance of cutting the seat from wear.

I update the picture of the bike with the new saddlebags. These ones I like better but wish they could be a hair bigger but they are a nice size.

Well, as long as you can still carry the cold ones home you're alright. I think it looks good with either set.

What really caught my eye was the paintwork on the rad shroud. NICE!!

The bags definetly do the job. Painting the radiator trim was a first for me. Someone else suggested it but I didn't do it before because I have never been able to get the trim pieces off. Someone reminded me that I have an impact driver and a few hits later they were off, cleaned up, and being painted in the parking lot. Most useful tool that I always forget is the impact driver. Bought it dirt cheap at harbor freight and it has paid for itself several time over.

Funny, I've had an awesome hand impact driver for like, 15 years but rarely used it, that is until I got this bike! I swear I've used it more in the last month than in the prior 15 years combined!!